Mako would have no difficulty seeing from his newfound (faceplant) perspective that there was indeed a silver key card poking out from beneath the plastic statue's foot.

"Stupendous work!" exclaimed Dr. Henshin. The doors slid open, revealing... a fairly nice little lounge! It wasn't anything special, but it was better than a boring meeting room. The lighting was relaxed, there were a couple sofas, some comfy chairs, a big TV, lots of tables—kind of like a very homey restaurant (which it may well have been during normal operation). The kooky little moth in question was seated in a large, cozy recliner, near a fireplace, in front of a sizable marble-topped coffee table. He was leaning forward and gazing down at it with a grave look on his face when they came walking up.

"Now, for your next puzzle, I have these twelve matchsticks..."

...

"I kid!" he blurted and clapped his hands, and leaned back. "How is everyone doing today, hm?"

This was bound to be an interesting meeting.

"You people act like you don't trust me...!" said Dr. Henshin, feigning emotional wounds. "A sweet little old man like me, really. Come now."

His tone made clear that he was kidding and unoffended by their attitudes. Perhaps there was some self-awareness in him after all.

He leaned back in his seat and clapped his hands a couple times. The lights dimmed and a flatscreen dropped out of the ceiling. "I'm sure you all remember a delightful young man named Seven," stated the moth as a photo of the boy (making a face not entirely unlike this) appeared onscreen. "For those of you who don't really know him, just rest assured that he was a little bleepity bleep."

Yes, he actually said bleepity bleep.

"As far as we know, he's a good little dead boy now," whoa, okay, kind of a scary thing to say, "but he left a very interesting item in Mako's care: a flash drive with GUN data."

"Seven’s flash drive contains an immense amount of data, though most of it is heavily encrypted. I'm not sure why he would have given us such a heavily secured device if he actually wanted us to learn anything. Perhaps it was something he never intended to part with, but decided to in the heat of the moment? I suppose we'll never really know, hm?"

"Anyway, decrypting the data has been an ongoing process for a while now. I only have bits and pieces. Among those, a word appears repeatedly: Phoenix. Someone in GUN had a… fixation on something called 'the Phoenix.' I can't yet decrypt enough of the document to really know what it is—a monster, a machine, a codename for something—but it keeps coming up over, and over, and over again, alongside two names: Fefifrin, and Cape Norden."

A photo of some mantis-looking guy and a map of an island appeared on the screen.

"Fefifrin—one Juneau Fefifrin—is an archaeologist. He apparently discovered something GUN was very interested in, located in Cape Norden, a frigid little country you probably haven't heard of, aaall the way out in Glastonia. For those of you who dozed off in geography class, it's a small continent—or was it a big island?—well, either way, it's on the dead opposite side of the globe from here, and completely and totally isolated from the rest of the world, with no modern communications in public use whatsoever. And, strangest of all, they just recently cut off international traffic, preventing anyone from entering or leaving the country on grounds of some kind of 'national crisis.'"

He suddenly sat up straight, and all the lights came on blindingly bright again.

"And that's where you come in!" he shouted a little too loudly for comfort. "I want to send a team on a little vacation to Cape Norden. If you're able, I'd like you to find out what's going on over there, if anything, and what the phoenix is. I also have reason to believe Mr. Fefifrin may be there, as well, so if you can find and get in contact with him, all the better."

He leered at his group.

"Any questions?"

Dr. Henshin pursed his lips, tapped all his fingertips together, and looked down. "Yes, well," he began hesitantly, "Hoji is actually in space, believe it or not, pursuing a very dangerous criminal. Very dangerous..."

"It isn't in character for us to call for outside help," he admitted with a sigh, "but I have no idea when he'll return. This mission would be an awful lot to ask of any one person, anyway."

He rocked back in his seat, twiddling his fingers. He seemed to manage to shake the worry from his tone, but there was still an unusual solemnity to his words.

"I would understand if any of you are too busy for a big trip like this, especially when it may be nothing but a wild goose chase. But, if you do decide to go, it should be an entertaining diversion, at the very least. And don't worry—I know how to get you in and out safely."